Step up: On corporate environmental responsibility

The December 19 judgment by a Supreme Court Bench placing corporate environmental responsibility inside the legal meaning of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reframes how the Court reads CSR in Indian company law while continuing its attempts since 2021 to reduce deaths of great Indian bustards from power infrastructure. The Bench has treated the CSR regime as an enforceable obligation rather than an undertaking at companies’ discretion while also reading social responsibility to include environmental and wildlife protection through the Companies Act itself. According to the Court, a corporation as a legal person shares the duty under Article 51A(g), which means spending CSR funds on environmental measures can be framed as discharging one’s constitutional obligation rather than engaging in charity. For great Indian bustards, the Court has thus strengthened the legal basis for conservationists to demand corporate financing for projects to recover species endangered by corporate activity. The Court’s 2021 interim order restricted overhead transmission lines across 99,000 sq. km and required a committee-led approach to feasibility and undergrounding. In 2024, it constituted an expert committee to balance species protection with climate commitments and renewable energy build-out, which the new order has operationalised. If CSR and project-linked financing become easier to compel, they can support the recurring costs of breeding and releasing chicks and of restoring grasslands and maintaining them.

However, the verdict is also a legal interpretation; it does not specify which companies must pay how much, where, when, and with what audit trail (the penalty for non-compliance will remain according to existing provisions). The Court’s shift from a large-area approach, as in its 2021 order, to revised priority areas also reduces conflict with renewable energy deployments while pushing some of the onus to the accurate mapping of habitats — a problem given bustards move around and infrastructure risks can lie outside formal boundaries. The judgment improves the legal position for getting companies to pay for prevention and recovery and specifies a narrower but more detailed habitat and infrastructure plan. Whether it is sufficient will depend less on the doctrine it announces and more on whether governments and utilities can deliver the undergrounding and rerouting work at the required pace, and whether corporate funding translates to outcomes on the ground.